Can't Live in Dreams
by Hedgi
Summary: Inspired by the Deleted scene, Cisco's "What if you never met me?", and a tumblr post with ArgentLives: There are timelines, so many timelines, where Cisco Ramon isn't part of STAR Labs, and Barry was never struck by lightning, and none of this ever happened. But that doesn't stop the dreams. (kinda Barry/Cisco but not quite? Take it how you will.)


There's a timeline where Cisco Ramon graduates high school at 15, and his parents are more interested in Dante's senior solo with his string orchestra than the acceptance letter to Stanford addressed to their younger son. But that's ok. That's always how it's been. Cisco's used to it, has long accepted it, and packs his bags.  
Sometimes he lingers in the musical hall, where Giancarlo Aquilanti conducts a piece of music he's heard a thousand times, and feels homesick, but more often, he hangs in the library or lecture halls, eagerly debating and discussing. He graduates early from there, too, and has as close to his pick of jobs as a brown kid's gonna get, and feels pride, honest and true.

Harrison Wells and Tess Morgan are opening the first in a series of labs in Central city, but that's not home anymore.

And then sometime in Mid-march, the dreams start, only they don't feel like dreams, and sometimes they come while he's awake, like sensory seizures or hallucinations or—memories. Of Harrison Wells in a wheelchair, even though Cisco's fairly certain the man can walk. Of a woman with a sad smile an an engagement ring, curling into his shoulder so close he can smell her perfume—but dreams don't smell, do they? Of a stork of a guy, all knees and elbows and a smile like the sun's coming out. Bits and pieces, like a television show playing over and over and over. Good memories, and bad—so scared sometimes, like when he dreams Harrison Wells kills him, or a man with an obscured face points a really cool looking gun at the stork-guy. Once, he dreams of bees.

But there are the hugs. The woman, the man, others—a black guy Cisco thinks he remembers, vaguely, as a cop in central city, the one who believed him and not the bully who jumped him in 10th grade. In those dreams, Cisco and feel warmth, hear heartbeats. It's like something from a comic book. So now he knows three things:

1\. These are not just dreams

2\. He has never met these people

3\. They are his family

One day, a name slips through. Barry Allen. A quick might-be-illegal search on the internet turns up several dozen people with that name, but only one in Central city.  
Cisco packs a backpack, buys a train ticket, and hopes that Barry Allen remembers him, too.

* * *

There's a timeline where Central city didn't work out, where his older brother was hit by a car, bled out in the street and he never forgave himself for it. The whole family moved, but finding new jobs were hard and the only way not to get caught up in the gangs and violence was in books, science, math. He escaped, but it was still hard, with a record under your name for fighting back, fighting, fighting, fighting.

Cisco didn't give up, through, refused to stop living. Looked for the stars on a fogged night. He was smart, he found a good college that wouldn't break the bank, applied for every scholarship he could. It took longer, so much longer, because—he proved himself, again and again but still from kindergarten on no one had believed in him.

He still graduated early, mechanical engineering major, a couple of mini-minors in things that he'd just wanted to study. Music—a way to stay close to the family that left him, the family he left.

And then the dreams started up, and he wondered if he finally cracked, if it was all too much. He dreamed of a building he'd never seen blazing and knowing that people he cared about had died.  
That night he called his mother for the first time in three years.

The dreams progressed into the spring, more vivid than anything they should have been, and they struck at any time, triggered flashes of something like memory.  
In one, he saw his second brother, pain in his eyes and bruising at his temple, and made a choice. He said a name—he didn't recognize it. Barry Allen. _His name is Barry Allen._  
The next night the name had a face, a body, a light-in-the-eyes, and Cisco felt sick knowing he'd betrayed a friend.

A friend? Yes. That certainty thudded against his chest, like the steady beeping of the heart monitor in another vision, the same guy- tall, skinny, white-as-paper on a hospital bed. Was that his fault?

"Why can't I remember?" he asked out loud, once, and the ghost of a voice echoed, a fuzzy tawny scene playing out in his mind of Barry Allen's hand on his shoulder. "You'll remember. We'll find each other."

Cisco sketched out everything he could remember with the hand of long practice, until he had a skyline. Central city. He'd start there.

* * *

There's a timeline where Cisco's late for the class he's a TA for at Hudson university, working with Martin Stein—he beat out Hartley Rathaway for the job and that felt as good as the paycheck—his head still ringing with the idea that he knew this man, that once the professor had hugged him like a son. The professor is in the middle of a lecture when he slips in the back, talking about time travel, and Cisco mouths the words along with him, catapulted back into a memory that he knows he does not have.

"That's so cool, isn't it?" the kid next to him says at the end of the lecture—and Cisco nods and frowns, because he knows that voice, that tone, that—

"I'm Barry. I like your shirt."

"Cisco," Cisco checks what he's wearing and laughs. "I like yours."

They are both wearing "Keep Calm and Han Shot First" tees.

* * *

There's a timeline where the dreams start up in mid-December 2013 instead of spring, 2015, and Cisco hears two Ronnies saying they'll go into the pipeline. Cisco goes in, instead, his last clear thoughts being Caitlin screaming at him from the other side of the radio, and a man he knows deep in his gut, is about to be hit by lightning.

Months and months and months later, as Martin Stein throws a fireblast in confused, hazed desperation, Cisco recognizes the faces and breaks through.

* * *

There's a timeline out there where Barry Allen lives in Paris with his mother following his father's death, and Cisco buys a plane ticket and wishes he knew French instead of Spanish.

* * *

There's a timeline where he is the Fastest Man alive, hit by lightning, and not running from something, but to someone.

* * *

There's a timeline where, after the dreams start and the name of the guy with the sunshine smile and the sad eyes falls from someone's tongue, Cisco goes hunting and finds a single newspaper article.

 **ALLEN FAMILY MURDERED IN HOME INVASION**

Cisco weeps that night on his bathroom floor for something he didn't know he'd lost.

* * *

He finds him, again, and again, and again.  
The universe wants him to.

~fin


End file.
